She Sang Beyond the Genius of the Sea
by Haina
Summary: [COMPLETE] ExT. This is Eriol and Tomoyo's story told from famous cities around the world. Their love blossomed thoughout the years from the ocean. And he thought she sang beyond the genius of the sea because she was beautiul.
1. living like a jellyfish

**Disclaimer:** All rights and privileges to Card Captor Sakura and all related art, characters and story are trademarks and property of CLAMP, Nelvana, Kodansha, NEP21, Tokyo Pop and associated parties. The characters of these works are used without permission for the purpose of entertainment only. I, Hally Dang, do not claim Card Captor Sakura and all related art, characters and story as my own property.

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**She Sang Beyond the Genius of the Sea  
**_By__Hally Dang_

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"She sang beyond the genius of the sea.  
The water never formed to mind or voice,  
Like a body wholly body, fluttering  
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion  
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,  
That was not ours although we understood,  
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean."

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**i.**_living like a jellyfish_

It was the summer after they graduated from junior high school. Tomoyo had somehow convinced her mother to rent her friends a little seaside house where they could spend the last weekend in August. They made a tight fit into the small room, having to sleep in sleeping bags spread across the hardwood floors. No one minded though. All were glad for the chance to spend time together before they went on their separate ways when summer ended.

Syaoran-kun was asked by his mother to return to Hong Kong in September. Tomoyo would be accompanying her mother to a new corporate headquarter in New York City. And Eriol-kun was returning to London in order to attend Eton in the fall. It was all coming to a close: their adventures, their exploits, their jokes.

It was a sad afternoon, for Tomoyo knew that it might very well be the last time she could spend time with all her friends. The entire car ride to the beach, Tomoyo felt like her stomach was being clutched at from the inside. There were many times she felt it was hard to breathe. She felt heavy, yet the waves lapping on the sand was like a cleansing water that pulled away all her worries into the ever-forgiving sea.

Oh, the sea, the sea! Tomoyo had no idea how small she could felt when she was standing beside the crashing waves. She could smell the salt in the air, mildly stinging. She remembered giggling suddenly because the waves were tickling her toes.

Tomoyo was running along the seashore where the sand was wet. The wind was pushing in from the water so her hair was a mess of charcoal in the air. She laughed and laughed because suddenly Sakura-chan was chasing her and they ran and ran; they fell giggling into the sand and rolled around trying to tickle each other until every bit of their clothe was covered in sand. Eriol-kun and Syaoran-kun were throwing the Frisbee back and forth, trying to outdo each other. Sakura-chan found a shell that glistened like a purple stone and strung it into Tomoyo's necklace.

When the sun was setting, Sakura-chan followed Syaoran-kun towards the rocky cliff-side, looking for sand dollars on the beach in the shape of a heart. Eriol-kun volunteered to untangle Tomoyo's hair by the bonfire. His hands were gentle. He pulled the brush through her long, long hair; it was like untying silk. She remembered how delicate he had been and it didn't hurt at all like it usually did when Sakura-chan or her maid had tried.

When Sakura-chan and Syaoran-kun did not return, Eriol-kun suggested that they go hunting for jellyfishes. The horizon was glittering in an orange afterglow. They found pieces of white gossamer washed up by the tide that looked like plastic bags.

"Do you know where jellyfishes come from, Tomoyo-chan?" he had asked her.

She shook her head.

"Well, a long, long time ago, a beautiful princess fell in love with a beautiful god. But that god did not love her back because he was a god and could not love mortals. The princess couldn't accept that her beautiful god did not love her. In her despair, she turned herself into tears and drifted into the ocean and mourned for her lost love. When the prince realized what had happened, he was maddened by grief for he had always loved the princess even though he never let her know."

"That was foolish of them," she had said. "If you love someone, you should let them know. You should scream it with all your being."

"Yes, that is true. But there was too much unsaid, too much lost between the prince and the princess. Yet even though his princess was gone, the prince still wanted to be near her. So the prince asked the god to turn him into a jellyfish so that he may be apart of his princess. That's why, my dear Tomoyo-chan, jellyfishes are the way they are. They are forever bounded to water for love of the sea."

She remembered his face then, consumed in shadows of the coming night.

"For the love of the sea, Tomoyo-chan, because the princess's grief was very great that it was like the rising tide, it consumed the prince. But the prince loved her nonetheless. The prince was with her nonetheless. Do you understand, Tomoyo-chan?"

She smiled and nodded. She started to run from him and stopped and turned to face him again. She was smiling broader. "Are we living like jellyfishes, Eriol-kun?"

"I think so."

She remembered the way his eyes matched the bottomless depths of the dark waters, reflected every pigment of color of its song. Suddenly, Tomoyo knew he was as infinite as the ocean; he was full of soft voices, full of smells, full of memories, full of everything the world could possibly contain.

"Yes; the sea, the sea, the sea," she was singing. Her voice faint, drowned out by the crashing waves.

"Yes, Tomoyo-chan," he returned in his quiet voice. "The sea, the sea, the sea."

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Eriol remembered too. In the years to come, her voice that evening etched itself into his memory as the single moment when he had _felt_ her—the true her—and she was beautiful beyond words. Nothing stained it, not even her immense sadness, as boundless as the sea she sang about; not even the knowledge that after being friends since elementary school, she still did not trust him enough to see her that way. Let it be, let it be.

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**Author's Note:** Based on a personal memory. I love the ocean, I do. I've always wanted to write this and now I have, it's a wonderful feeling. "She sang beyond the genius of the sea" is from the first line of one of my favorite poems, "The Idea of Order at Key West" by Wallace Stevens, as quoted in the beginning of this fic. Please look it up and read it. It's beautiful.

The last bit from Eriol's perspective is partly inspired, partly stolen from Annie Proulx. Go read her short story "Brokeback Mountain."

This was originally a drabble for 52flavour, a fic challenge where I had claimed EriolxTomoyo. The prompt was "living like a jellyfish" thus this strange story. This is a bit too long so I am posting this separately from "**Drops in the Ocean**"—where all my other drabbles are archived. Please go there if you are interested in reading more.

I think there is room for a few more chapters. I'm very happy with how this turned out and there are many ideas and emotions in here I would like to write more about. Look out for more updates.

Thank you for reading and please review before you leave.


	2. the need to hold still

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"The sea was not a mask. No more was she.  
The song and water were not medleyed sound  
Even if what she sang was what she heard,  
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.  
It may be that in all her phrases stirred  
The grinding water and the gasping wind;  
But it was she and not the sea we heard."

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**ii. **_the __need to hold still_

She really didn't know what it was that made her do it. For several days now she had been entertaining the idea. In fact, on the night she landed in London Heathrow Airport, she had her mother's secretary look up the address and phone number of one Eriol Hiiragisawa. The information was tucked safely away within the pages of an old French history she had been reading.

She knew that Eriol would still have been studying at Eton College so there would have really been no point in trying to see him. Finally after several weeks, noting that it was nearing Lent and he should be on short leave from school, Tomoyo called his residence in Mayfair. At first, he was surprised to hear from her after so many years but he was pleased nonetheless. His voice was a lot deeper than what she remembered. His Japanese, however, was flawless as ever. Eriol had suggested that they meet at Windsor Bridge, by the banks of the Thames.

It was the middle of January, although the weather wasn't as nearly as cold or bitter. The sun was shining brightly that morning and she remembered distinctly the way his hair glowed beneath the sunlight. She was surprised by how much taller he had grown. He wasn't a boy anymore and she, too, was no longer a little girl. Memories have a way of deceiving its possessor.

Eriol had settled well into the position of a young refined English gentleman. His face had grown longer, his jaw line more defined, and he stopped wearing those thick wire rimmed glasses she remembered from her youth and causing his eyes to become even more striking. His skin had gotten a touch of bronze, unlike the pallor of the younger boy from Japan. Tomoyo was a young lady now—no more braids or pigtails. The innocence of childhood was gone from her features, yet she was still angelic; she was even more beautiful now. Her face was like a watercolor; soft lines that flowed like melted snow down aspens.

He had hugged her at first. In an awkward movement, he wrapped his arms around her. Tomoyo hesitated but hugged him back and laughed. They stood in silence at first, taking in each other's appearance and changes. Then they started talking about the dreadful English weather, school, their lives so far, their future plans, what had brought her to England. She explained about how she had come to London with her Mother during the Christmas holidays. They had gotten into an awful row over Tomoyo's future and Tomoyo decided to take a brief leave from her boarding school back in Connecticut.

"Do you not plan on returning to school, Tomoyo?" he had asked quite incredulously. They had lapped into English now. Tomoyo spoke in a clear tone with hints of an American accent. Eriol's speech was the epiphany of that of a courteous British gentleman—the perfect tongue in the Queen's English.

She waved away his anxious expression. "Don't look so worrisome. Some people are simply not as blessed as you are," she smiled. "Some of us must search and search for our places in life. I'm very jealous of you, you know, because you already know exactly where your life is leading you and who exactly you are."

"What are you looking for?"

"Myself," she said the word delicately. "I've been thinking lately and you know what? I think I've been disillusioned all my life. Ever since I was a young girl, I was taught to be the perfect person. I believed that I had to fulfill what was expected of me, to fit into a mold my mother had wanted me to fit into. The Japanese culture is rather stifling that way. I must be respectful to my elders; I must be soft-spoken and pliable; I must be a good student; I must listen to my mother. And she had laid out a life before me, all planned and ready to go. But that life is not my own and it never will be. I never chose to be an executive of a toy company and I had never asked to be. I wish for a future that is truly mine and I suppose that includes making a break with my past. I look forward to making mistakes and not having my mother tell me the consequences. To experience failure and disappointment. I think I would be happy even if I was let down, because the bottom line is at least I made my own choice instead of having my mother chose for me. That is why I am here."

"You are very strong, Tomoyo-chan," he added kindly in gentle Japanese—his voice somehow steely and unwavering.

They were standing in the middle of Windsor Bridge, connecting main street Eton to the Windsor Palace. Tomoyo's cheeks were tinged with red and she looked away. She leaned forward on the stone railings looking into the murky water below. The bridge was three arches and supported by two great granite piers. The sound of water licking the stone was faint in the air. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion under the winter sun. The sky was blue beyond recognition, the water flowing slowly away into the distance. Despite its appearance, The Thames reminded Tomoyo of tea, dark green and mysterious—full of history and knowledge.

"The River Thames has always been very special to me," Eriol spoke again following her eyes to where the river and the sky met. "This nation was born of its waters, lived by its banks. This river is the very vein of England."

"It's also very polluted," she supplied lightheartedly, scrunching her nose at the foggy color.

He chuckled. "That's true. Civilization produces waste, it is inevitable," his eyes twinkled. "Rivers, I think, are amazing. The Thames carries away all the oils, all the dirt of London—of England—into the sea. It cleans us of our sins, our vanity, and our filth. It is the catharsis of England."

"Into the sea."

"Yes, into the sea," he echoed her. "Everything flows into the sea; she is the ultimate taker of all things and she is the ultimate giver. She is merciless, she is merciful. The sea is forever forgiving of our fallacies."

"To be forgiven and absolved," she smiled and closed her eyes to the sunlight.

He noticed how her hair made extraordinary swirls into the air like smoke spiraling into the darkening sky—she was holding the light in her hair. Her lashes were long and dark, making a striking contrast with her pale skin. She was titling her face up above and he swore for moments he thought that she was a seraph.

"Are you happy, Tomoyo-chan?" he asked tentatively, the Japanese words escaping him before he could stop them.

She was shaken from her reverie, looking to him, she was surprised. He wondered if he had finally crossed some invisible line that had always been set between them.

"Do I seem happy to you, Eriol-kun?" she returned in the same gentle Japanese.

He couldn't answer. She looked so broken to him then: standing there on Windsor Bridge with the chill of winter in her cheeks, her dark long hair flowing down about her, her eyes glittering, her small figure holding itself tall and erect against the wind. How unearthly she seemed to him, how divine, how dispirited—how completely, utterly _hiemalis_. Without thinking, Eriol leaned in and kissed her.

She tasted like the sea—cool, salty, sweet, and infinite. She was soft and giving as satinwood—like sea foam on sandy beaches laced in jagged ocean waves. Kissing her was natural; almost like intuition. When he pulled away, he was suddenly cold and it had nothing to do with the weather.

"_Hiemalis_," he said almost in a daze.

She was puzzled. "Is that Latin?" she asked.

He nodded. "You remind me of the ocean during the winter. You are of the winter."

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Eriol really didn't know what it was that made him do it. But he will always remember kissing Tomoyo; he will always remember the way she tasted, the way she smelled, the way she felt. He really didn't know, either, what about her that made him think about her all the time. All he knew was the need to hold still that moment in his memory. He needed to hold on to that image of Tomoyo then, standing tall and strong like a redwood on Windsor Bridge, she was beyond comprehension, beyond beauty, beyond the genius of the sea. He needed to hold on to that feeling when he was with her. She was the purity of winter, the silence of the sky, the splendor of the sea and he was everything—he truly felt filled by a sense of vitality—because of her.

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**Author's Notes**: I'm sorry to report that in writing this I had exhausted every bit of my creative power for the next five weeks. Yet I could not stop myself from working on it. This entire story had been the most personal piece of writing I have done in fanfiction. Looking back on this I realized how much of this came from my own experiences and how many of these thoughts had been mine. The monologue Tomoyo had delivered had been almost the exact words I had spoken. This is about the most autobiographical piece I had ever created. It always shocks me a bit whenever I realize how much of my reality and my fiction collide, although I really shouldn't.

Eton College is a very prestigious private school for boys ages 13 to 18. Many of the most influential and affluent people in Britain as well as around the world send their sons to Eton, including many of the previous British Prime Ministers and most members of the Royal Family. The school is located in Eton, Berkshire, which is a town very close to London. Eton is also across the river from Windsor Palace, connected by Windsor Bridge, where this story took place.

My image of Eriol in England is not complete without Eton. I can really see him there; dressed in the traditional black tail suit with the waistcoat and cufflinks, all ironed the pressed. Eriol to me is very British, almost unbearably so.

London is one of my favorite cities and I couldn't help but set this there. I see Eriol living in Mayfair, set roughly between Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly and Park Lane, is at the very heart of London. As I had read somewhere it is "full of refined hotels where affluent foreigners stay, the impressive 18th century edifices of Mayfair are resided in by people of fabulous wealth." Sound familiar?

_Hiemalis_ is Latin for "of winter" or "wintry." As Eriol attends Eton where Latin is stressed I figure I'd throw around one of my favorite Latin words. Even though, Eriol being Clow, would be fluent in Latin anyways.

You might be wondering why this took place at a river instead of the seashore. I tried to inject as much oceanic imagery as possible into this. This chapter is a transition point for the entire plot so it only made sense for Tomoyo and Eriol to be at a transition. They are both seniors in high school. Tomoyo is looking for a new direction in her life. They are standing on a bridge that connects two different places, like how they are both at crossroads themselves in their own lives. Besides, all rivers flow into the sea.

Again, "the need to hold still" is a prompt at 52flavours. The poem at the beginning is the second stanza from "The Idea of Order at Key West" by Wallace Stevens.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. Please review before you leave—I love hearing back from you.


	3. the opposite of faith

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"For she was the maker of the song she sang.  
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea  
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.  
Whose spirit is this? We said, because we knew  
It was the spirit that we sought and knew  
That we should ask this often as she sang.  
If it was only the dark voice of the sea  
That rose, or ever colored by many waves;  
If it was only the outer voice of sky  
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,  
However clear, it would have been deep air,  
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound  
Repeated in a summer without end  
And sound alone."

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**iii.** _the_ _opposite of faith_

Venice was a city bounded to the ocean. The salty sea water came through the canals, seeping into every aspect of Venetian life. The city had always been a part of the sea since the time of the Byzantine Empire and the sea was a part of it.

Eriol had come to this city first a year ago. Fresh out of Cambridge, he was a young man with the whole world at his fingertips. The future was blinding with possibilities. He was offered an editorship at a prestigious literary magazine, yet, he chose Venice. Taking residence in an old white house on the Grand Canal, he immersed himself in Italian culture. Eriol spent his days writing in a nearby cafe or unwinding at a studio of a local artist and spending his nights at the prominent parties of the European elites.

It was an idyllic and comfortable life—and Venice with all the best it could offer him. This life was something fallen from the brush of a 19th century impressionist painter: the elaborate facades on buildings curving with gold and colored marble, the odd arching bridges, the omnipresent sound of water, the history, the richness, the sounds, the lights, the textures. It was all flowing lines and porticos and patterns against an explosion of color.

Venice was an art—the city born of salt water channels, the city forever at the mercy and love of the sea; never tainted by the hazards of modernity, untouched by automobiles. Eriol took regular strolls through the Piazza San Marco and reveled in its wide open spaces and expressive Italian Renaissance architecture that transported him back in time. The piazza was surrounded by basilicas of magnificent Byzantine domes and reaching arcades of overflowing colonnades and colored mosaics. The stone arches were particularly appealing to him; each was delicately carved in marble multiplying into a great distance.

Dawn was torching the sky on fire, Eriol noticed early one morning when he made his way through the Piazza San Marco. He couldn't fall asleep, so he read Yeats by candlelight; candlelight, only for the sake of it. Then, when morning neared, he decided to watch the sunrise from the Piazza. The images of the brooding verse were still thick in his mind.

The Piazza was hauntingly empty at this hour except for the pigeons that crowded the patterned tile floors. He relished the silence: the Venice without its throngs of tourists.

He noticed her then. A dark figure bent among the cooing birds, enveloped in the unearthly purple glow of twilight. She straightened, drawing herself to her full height. There was a fluttering of wings about her and feathers flew in the air. There was something mysterious about her.

Eriol stopped in mid-step. His last footfall left a dreamlike echo reverberating through San Marco. He squint his eyes towards her, the contours of her body strangely familiar to him. Yet she was exquisite. Surely she had fallen from Michelangelo's hands. Surely she was not real.

"Hello stranger," she said in soft lyrical Italian; her voice crisp and clear in the morning mist. She was smiling.

He immediately recognized the voice. It was the same voice that sang to him at dusk on a Japanese beach with the music of the sea. It was the same voice that remained unbending like a redwood against the winter on Windsor Bridge. Words failed him.

She laughed. It was a sparkling laugh that rang throughout San Marco like silver bells, carrying the very substance of joy within it. "Oh, Eriol-kun, have you missed me?"

He was surprised by the sudden change of language and tone. He stepped closer. To his horror, he saw that she had cut her long hair—hair that had been as thick and dark as the night itself were now only loose curls that hung like twisting grape vines above her shoulders. He wouldn't have recognized her face if not for her eyes. No one in the world had that particular shade of amethyst.

How many years had it been now? The years passed by too fast, slipping through his grasp. He still remembered her from their last meeting—it all seemed like a lifetime ago—in some now unfamiliar place. He did not like the way they had left matters last and he no longer knew who she was anymore. But Venice was another meeting place in another time. They were completely different people now, each in completely different places in life.

She told him in her soft soprano voice that she arrived in Venice only the day before. She still lived in New York City, working as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She came to acquire a Rembrandt from a private Venetian collection.

He walked with her and brought her beneath the yellow light of an iron-wrought lamp post. The light made her skin give off a touch of gold. He felt his breath caught in his throat, as if seeing her for the first time. Despite the warm summer air, Tomoyo still held the hush of winter within her, steely and fiery.

"Have you found yourself, my dear Tomoyo?" he asked her airlessly. "Surely, your search had not been in vain."

She let out a soft laugh. "Do you what it is that I have finally learned?"

He shook his head. "Tell me."

In a bold gesture, she took his hands in hers. She tiptoed so her lips brushed his right ear. "Someone told me that the world is not imperfect nor on a slow journey towards perfection," she whispered, her breath hot against his skin. "Eriol-kun, can't you see? The world is perfect every moment and it had always been perfect since the beginning of time."

He turned to study her face. Her eyes were glistening.

"I had spent many years looking for meaning and happiness. But often I only end up empty handed, with only memories of other people's pains and joys. I was only recalling things other people have desired," her voice bubbled. "But the world is like the sea, always merciful and forgiving. No matter what happens, the tide will always rise and fall. The sea will forever sing its song and if you listen closely enough, you will hear what it had always been trying to tell us. That the world is beautiful and perfect just the way it is. Every sin already hold it's forgiveness within itself, every dying man holds eternal life within himself. The sea, oh, the sea, the sea have always been infinite in every direction."

Eriol could not speak.

She pressed her hands against his cheeks. "I never forgot what you told me. The sea is a catharsis; the sea is forever forgiving. I was looking too hard, seeing too much, searching and searching and searching until I was naught. Only then, by the voice of the ocean, did I find truth—the one true thing that everything was already beautiful, everything was already meaningful."

He was surprised by the warmth of her proximity. His back pressed against the black iron of the street lamp, he wanted to touch her hair and to ascertain its length. All he could think about was the endlessness of her skin, pure and smooth flowing like water. He remembered the way she tasted.

There was sadness in her eyes, escaping through a force greater than that of the wind itself. She rested her forehead upon his shoulder. "I like you, Eriol-kun," she whispered. Her Japanese was tender, as if speaking something forbidden.

He chuckled in spite of himself.

"That is all I can give you. This is all I can do," she was sad again. "We are two of a kind, you and I; we are both incapable of loving for we had loved too fiercely for another who was no meant to be. We are spent of love and now there is no more to give."

"What else is there in this world worth living for, carissima, if not for love?" he asked her, his voice belonging to that of a broken man—killing her softly with every caress of his grave tone.

"Truth, Eriol-kun," she answered. "Truth."

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Perhaps the entire notion of love was a misconception. But he couldn't tell; it was all only just words and letters. He only had his memories—soft reminiscences of the sea and waves and times when all they had was the opposite of faith. And that moment, when she was standing against the light in Venice, eclipsing the sun—a shadow of a girl—he recognized the wisdom she possessed. It was much more than the ages and time, much truer than the words he can only speak and never know. She was his highest reverence.

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**Author's Notes:** Ah, Venice. I've always wanted to write about Venice—the city in a timeless love affair with the sea. I'm rather pleased with the outcome. Yes, I think it will do for now. I might come back to this story someday and edit and fool around with different sentences and words.

Piazza San Marco, where this all took place, had been called by Napoleon as "the drawing room of Europe." Indeed, it is a beautiful place, a cross between a park and a square. It is perhaps most famous today for the pigeons that crowds its floors and hopelessly elaborate Italian Renaissance buildings. The Grand Canal is the biggest and most historical canal in the city. The buildings that line it are beautiful, many made of colored marble.

Yeats, as alluded to here, is perhaps the greatest (and arguably the most difficult) poet of the Twentieth Century. William Butler Yeats is Irish in origin and wrote some of the most amazing verse of the English language. His subject is often occult, full of vivid imagery, magnificent diction and beautiful rhythm and rhyme.

Tomoyo's philosophies, as expressed here, about the perfect state of the world are something I first came by when reading Herman Hesse, a rather famous German existentialist writer. Of course this concept is not something original, it is initially a Taoist idea. When I read about it, I was struck by its simplicity. I believe in that now. Joy is everywhere in life and all you need to do is to stop, relax, and let life come to you. We are trying too hard.

Carissima, as Eriol calls Tomoyo, is an Italian term of endearment. It means my precious one or darling.

Another prompt for 52flavours. Wallace Stevens is wonderful, as always.

Please review before you leave.


	4. grace coming out of the void

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"But it was more than that,  
More ever than her voice, and ours, among  
The meaningless plungings of water and wind,  
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped  
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres  
Of sky and sea.  
It was her voice that made  
The sky acutest at its vanishing."

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**iv.** _grace_ _coming out of the void_

It had been exactly fifteen years since the last time the four of them had been together. Syaoran and Sakura had finally married the year before. They had separated throughout high school and college—Sakura at the University of Tokyo and Syaoran at Beijing University—but came back together after graduation. Some people were meant to be. The two had waited a couple of years before they tied the knot officially; everyone knew they were made for each other.

Tomoyo had spent the past fifteen years mostly in America, except, of course, for her frequent travels abroad. She now lived in a stylish penthouse in the Upper East Side in Manhattan. She opened an art gallery only a few years ago and has become one of the avant-garde authorities on the international art scene.

But Eriol was a mystery. Everyone had heard the rampant rumors about him from the British tabloids. Eriol had been linked to several European Princesses and Duchesses throughout the years. He had lived all over the world. First it was Venice, then Prague, Amsterdam, Vienna, Bordeaux and slowly they lost track of his whereabouts. For their reunion, Eriol had come all the way from Sydney.

The gathering was Sakura's grand idea. Eriol had not been able to attend the Li-Kinomoto wedding the previous year due to some unspecified pressing matters back in London; no one knew the details exactly. Sakura had thought it appropriate to celebrate their first anniversary together—no one could refuse. Sakura insisted that they meet in Havana, where Syaoran had wanted to come on honeymoon before they decided to go to Greece.

And Havana! Beautiful, decadent Havana of faded old-world glory and turn-of-the-century charm. The streets were lined with sleek 50s and 60s American cars and paint peeled from the walls of everything. The city was bursting in spectacular Spanish colonial architecture. Everything was inundated in golden light.

It was mid-December but Havana was damp and hot. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico were particularly warm this year. Tomoyo was rather glad to have gotten an excuse to leave the grey skies of New England for Cuba's brilliant colors and sultry atmosphere.

The four spent their first weekend together in a little town just outside of Havana, soaking in the endless daylight of the white beach and crystal blue waters. They had a great time with the natives. Eriol and Syaoran spent hours with the fishermen conversing in fluent Spanish about everything and anything. Tomoyo picked up a beautiful hand braided palm leaf sunhat which she wore all the time. Sakura, vivacious and glowing, spent the most time in restaurants and kitchens, sampling every bit of Cuban cuisine she saw.

The following week, they stayed in Habana Viejo at a luxury hotel along Malecón. The four engrossed in the vibrant Cuban nightlife of salsa lounges, intense Latin music and sensual dances fueled by rhythm. Early in the evening, they would make a tight fit into a silver-blue classic Oldsmobile and drive down the seawall to an open salsa club on the beach. They would not return until the sun had risen, tipsy from alcohol and head still throbbing with salsa music.

On their last night in Havana, they spent most of the time on the beach, basking in the every last bit of the Cuban sun. Tomoyo had never seen the color of the ocean like it was in Cuba, too blue for words.

Finally, they made their way to their favorite salsa club again. Eriol made an extravagant speech for the happy couple over dinner. It was past midnight, yet the night was still young. Syaoran and Sakura had been dancing for hours and have now gone back to the hotel together.

Eriol could not keep his eyes off Tomoyo the entire week, although he solemnly ever spoke to her directly. Although he was often surrounded by lovely Cuban ladies, he always kept an eye on Tomoyo. On this night in particular, she was wearing a stunning iridescent gown of sunset orange. It flowed like the wind around her knees.

"Hola, belleza."

Tomoyo looked up from her Daiquiri. "Hola," she said with a hint of amusement in her eyes. "I see you have finally peeled yourself away from your escorts."

Eriol laughed. "I have to admit all this attention had been a little exhausting."

She took another sip from the champagne glass. She reached up and tipped his chin with her index finger. "I have to admit you are quite a dashing boy. I don't blame them."

Eriol sat down beside her. "Alcohol has strange effects on people."

"I'll miss these Cuban cocktails," she laughed.

"I'm sure," he smiled. His eyes entertained her. He picked off an orange tiger lily from the centerpiece of the little table and pushed it behind her ear. "Have I ever told you that you are beautiful?"

"I think you are drunk."

Eriol let out a wry chuckle. "Then what I say is true."

Tomoyo inhaled sharply. She was so very close to him. She was suddenly gripped by the sudden sense of time slipping away. His carefully sculpted face had aged a little from the last time she saw him, a little, but still noticeable. She remembered the boy she knew from Japan, the young man she saw in London, and the lost soul she found in Venice. Above all else, she remembered that look in his eyes, she did not know if it was pity, pain, wonder or veneration. But like everything else, time had a way of leaking between the spaces; slowly eroding away the cracks until there was a great abyss between them, like ancient rivers that carved steep canyons by the hand of time.

Tomoyo wanted to be his ocean. She wanted to his redemption, his reason. She had realized a long ago that she did not love him and she could never love him. But what they had was true; their affinity was true and that was enough.

"Eriol-kun," the words fell from her lips before she could stop them.

"Are you very bored, Tomoyo-chan?" his Japanese was fluid and yielding.

"Out of my mind," a whisper.

"¿Quieres bailar, mi amor?" he asked, his voice soft again, his eyes dark.

Eriol took her hand and led her to the center of the dance floor. Tomoyo was sure it was nearing dawn yet the band of still playing. The female vocalist was still at her microphone, singing her sultry tones to the Latin music. They danced the salsa and rumba—swaying and shifting to the beat of the Conga drums. Her body pressed against his, moving together to the thick rhythm.

But there was only the music and nothing else. They were lost in the music, lost in the vertigo of Havana. She was completely under his spell and his eyes glowing like midnight fireflies. Their arms raised and intertwined in the air. She leaned into him, feeling him. His hands slipped to her hips, pulling her closer, swaying her to the beat of the drums. Eriol pressed his cheek to her ear; his breathing was heavy.

"Do you know what she is singing about?" his voice was deep and rasping.

Tomoyo closed her eyes and shook her head.

"El mar," he was whispering, translating the lyrics into English it was sung. "I left my soul down...down by the sea. Lost control to you…lost control to you."

Tomoyo suddenly regretted having one too many Daiquiris. She was slowly surrendering to the music, to his hands as he pressed against her. She was defenseless. He buried his face into her hair, taking in the scent of her sweat and perfume. As the music deepened, they deepened their embrace. He was suddenly kissing the niche between her neck and shoulder. She shuddered. Every movement was electricity. Dancing with him was like making love to him.

She wrapped her arms around him. Still dancing, still stirring, the music moved them to frenzy. She kissed him. His tongue slipped past her lips and made a mess of her mouth. Her hands were lost in his hair, his fingers dug into her hip bone. She melted into him, mouth to mouth, lust to lust.

"Te quiero," he said when he pulled away; his chest still heaving slightly. It wasn't a statement, it was plea. He laid kisses into the curve of her shoulder, pushing off the right strap of her dress to her arm. "Stay with me, won't you, Tomoyo?"

She was entranced by the ambiance of salsa and rumba. It was Havana and she could not refuse.

_o_

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Eriol would never forget that day. Her brilliant orange dress, the tiger lily in her hair, her skin, her scent—all etched into his memory, an indelible mark. It was the seduction of the tropical ocean, the seduction of the sensual music. They never knew how bad it got. He was adrift at sea of time and place, living life like a tragedy. And he was running, always running away from himself. In his darkest hours, it was Tomoyo—in that exquisite gown—who rescued him. She was his grace coming out of the void that consumed him. It was her love—or whatever it was she held that saved him. He needed her more than he could ever admit to himself.

_o_

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**Author's Notes:** I love Cuba—never mind the political turmoil and all that international drama—especially Havana. Only one word comes to mind: decadence. Everything about Havana is decadent and full of faded old-world grandeur. There's charisma to it, a mixture of Spanish and Latin and turn of the century glory. I want to set that atmosphere of sultry dancing and faded glamour.

Syaoran went to Beijing University, better known as Beida in China. It is one of the two creams of the crop universities in China. You can probably compare it as the Harvard or Princeton of China. Tomoyo lives in Manhattan's the Upper East Side. That's a very elite and wealthy neighborhood around the Central Park area. It's full of Prada and Chanel and fabulous wealth.

Habana Viejo is Spanish for Old Havana. It refers to the most historical parts of Havana and all its Spanish Colonial architecture is quite breathtaking. Most of the area is under restoration today. Malecón is the avenue that runs along the seawall in Northern Havana. Many of the pictures you see of Havana where the waves are crashing into the seawall are taken here.

Daiquiri is a specialty Cuban cocktail, made famous when Ernest Hemingway (_the_ Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954) stayed in Havana during the 40s. Fun fact: Hemingway was inspired to write his masterpiece _The Old Man and the Sea_ (coincidentally I also wrote a twenty page essay on the Hemingway hero based on that book) about an aged Cuban fisherman's heroic battle with a swordfish while living in Havana. The Daiquiri is pretty much just sugar, ice and dry rum; rather refreshing.

The salsa and rumba are both famous Latin dances that originated from Cuban. The rumba is a take off of African dances when the slaves were brought onto the sugar plantations in Cuba. The dances had been viewed as risqué for many years in the early Twentieth century because they were very sensual in nature. Today they are very fun party dances. Havana is not complete without salsa.

Finally, five years of torture in Honors Spanish had finally paid off. And this is about the full extent of my Spanish abilities.

_Hola, belleza_; hello, beautiful.  
_Quieres_ _bailar, mi amor_; would you like to dance, my love?  
_El mar_; the sea.  
_Te quiero_; literally translates to "I like you" but it is actually the Spanish idiom for "I want you."

I hope you enjoyed this. Please review before you leave.


	5. tomorrow is something we remember

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"She was the single artificer of the world  
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,  
Whatever self it had, became the self  
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,  
As we beheld her striding there alone,  
Knew that there never was a world for her  
Except the one she sang and, singing, made."

_o_

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**v.** _tomorrow is something we remember_

The sky heaved and shuttered like an old animal and thus the snow came down, covering the earth in forgetful white. It was a vision reminiscent of Renoir's _La Vague_. Along the twisting shoreline, the ocean roared full of sound and fury from its long battle with the churning winter storm.

His skin was numb; his eyes were watering from the piercing wind. The extreme cold was a shock to his senses. Coming from the warmth of the Canary Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, he was incongruous, standing hunched in the snow in his heavy overcoat and Burberry scarf.

Soft—he tried to remember the tropical warmth, tried to remember some resemblance of all the things he had cherished. But here, the cloudy sky and the sea were seamless, rolling against each other, and causing everything to slip away from comprehension. In a disquieting way, everything had fallen into a fog; he couldn't tell where he ended and where he began.

Then he heard a voice calling his name in the distance; he saw her like an emblem—dark and beautiful, with her hair gone in the wind coming from the ocean, her voice swirling with the salty cold air. Her heavy winter coat, which fell to her knees, was of a brilliant purple, heightening the color of her amethyst eyes. Tomoyo was one of those girls that folded radiance in the curls of her hair; she was beyond words. She carried a sense of liveliness with her, wherever she went.

"Bonjour, chéri." He watched the mist of his breaths rise and fall.

She smiled—it was the only thing he saw clearly. When she came close to him, she tiptoed herself and placed a kiss on both his cheeks in greeting as the French do. He couldn't help but smile back, catching the faint scent of her in the air.

"Bonjour," she said. Her words were pleasant, yet still held a trace of an American accent beneath the satin sounds. "Comment vas-tu?" she asked.

"Je gère," he replied. "Et tu?"

"Pas trop mal," she said and gave him an inquisitive look. She slowly reached out to him, pulling at his arms where his hands were stuffed deep in his pockets. "Your hands are cold," she commented as she pressed her fingers to his.

He noticed a snowflake caught on her long dark eyelashes, it sat there, almost glistening, before melting away. For, perhaps, only the third time in his life, Eriol could not find the words to convey his thoughts. His face fell. "The sea, the sea, the sea," he sang softly.

"C'est quoi?" she asked, concerned.

He studied her, trying to catch a glimmer of the sadness he knew she carried like an ocean inside her. "Je suis désolé," he finally said. It was a whisper—lost, like her hair, like the delicate snowflakes falling around them.

"For what?"

"Everything," he replied, quietly, "for being a complete and utterly unforgivable prick and leaving you in Havana, and then for unabashedly asking you to meet me again."

"Oh," she breathed. "I see." She looked away as though there couldn't possibly be more to say and, letting go of his hand, she took a step back from him.

For moments she looked away into the distance where the waves crashed and the sea sang. The snow was tapering off slowly and the ocean was churning, making noise to fill the spaces. When she finally turned to face him, she was no longer smiling. "What are we doing, Eriol?" she finally asked.

He squinted, as if in uncertainty.

"I can't keep doing this," she gestured into the air, into the sea, with an urgency she has never revealed. "I'm tired of being homeless. All these years, I've been all over the world, through countless countries and innumerable cities, and I keep moving and I keep going. I've learned so much through all this traveling and I've realized that this world is beautiful—_beautiful_ beyond language—but that's not enough. There's a part of me that is never satisfied no matter how many new places I've ventured and how many exciting people I've met. It hurts, Eriol."

"Don't, darling," he said, gently, and suddenly feeling the urge to touch her dark, ash hair. "Don't hurt. You are something extraordinary—so extraordinary."

She looked away. The cold brought a warm hint of pink to her cheeks.

"Are you happy, Tomoyo?" he asked and remembered the time they were standing on Windsor Bridge where he had asked the same question.

She took a moment to consider and when she turned back, she was smiling once again. "Of course," she replied, full of a conviction she lacked years ago. "Of course, I am. I never knew I could be truly happy, but I am now and I have been for a very long time."

"Isn't happiness enough?"

"No, it isn't."

Her replied surprised him. Eriol studied her face, trying to decipher what was written there. He suddenly realized that he had never understood her. She was infinite, like sea, like air; there was no possible way to completely comprehend infinity. "Does truth worth more than happiness?" he questioned, struggling to understand.

She nodded. "Yes, Eriol," she said. "Truth is all I have."

Before he had time to respond, she was walking away from him. He quickly followed her to the western end of the beach. Eriol noticed how small her footprints were compared to his. The snow had stopped now and everything was blindingly white, except for that line of brown wet sand where the sea and land met. The ocean had a heartbeat, it seemed, the continual crashing of waves, the ebbing of the tides—in and out, in and out. In that moment, the world was still as if time had stopped, covered in white, but the ocean still moved on and continued it's heartbeat—in and out, in and out—it was all Eriol heard.

Suddenly, as fast as she had started, Tomoyo stopped. She turned back to see him just a few paces behind her. She was thoughtful. "But maybe, someday, love will be enough," she said.

He smiled, understanding, and when he was close enough, he kissed her cheek. "But we are those who cannot love, Tomoyo. Can we ever be enough for each other?" he whispered the question to her ear.

Tomoyo contemplate the question in her mind. In the silence, the songs of the sea became lamentations, poetry—became history. The crashing waves, full of sea foam and salt, making echoes that sound across the coastline; they were echoes of history, but really a beginning.

She took his right hand in her left, lacing her fingers with his. "Someday," she replied and kissed the hand she held. "But right now, we are not alone anymore. We're home."

And thus the snow came down again—merging with her voice that comprehended him beyond any reckoning of it—for this is the end of their beginning and tomorrow was something they remember.

_o_

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In the end, all a man has is his memories. And Eriol had many. There were the recollections of his previous life and images from an ancient time that were all just a dream to him. There had been times when he had been wrapped up in rapture, times when he lost faith, times of vertigo—too many memories, too many moments. Truthfully, in the end, all a man _can_ remember is what is the most important to him. And Eriol could only remember, in crystalline clarity, Tomoyo. Even when his mind and body gave away into old age, he could still remember her, every detail of her face, every timbre of her voice, and everything that had made her Tomoyo because everything about her was beautiful. In the end, all Eriol had was Tomoyo and truth; somehow the two was interchangeable.

In life, there will always be times of strife and times of joy, there will always be beginnings and there will always be endings. Eriol had seen many such beginnings and endings, yet Tomoyo's world had neither beginnings nor endings. It took him his entire lifetime to understand her. The world had always been perfect because it had always existed in that state; it had been perfect since the beginning of time and it is perfect right this moment and it will always be perfect. Time is only a perception.

The end is where we start from.

_o_

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- **fin** -

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**Author's Notes:** Snow on the beach is a delicate and beautiful thing. It is one of those sights too fantastic to be real and would only linger as a dreamlike image. It is such a rare thing that few people have the pleasure of seeing. I was lucky last winter to have been spending a weekend at a beach house on Cape Cod when the snow came. It was _gorgeous_. That morning when I woke to the snow everywhere is something that will always stay with me.

Renoir's _La Vague _is one of my favorite paintings of all time. It is a swirl of purples and blues, greens and yellows that mix and churn like a real storm out at sea. It is a brilliant piece of work that represented this scene perfectly.

The Canary Islands is a popular vacation spot for Europeans. It is like the Bermuda of Europe. The weather is warm there throughout the year. It is off the coast of Spain. It is also famous for black sand beaches. Burberry is a very popular, and very expensive, British designer brand—sort of like Prada, Gucci.

I spent a bulk of my childhood studying French. In fact, I was almost fluent when I was little but alas, when I picked up Spanish and stopped practicing, I can't speak French very well anymore. It is one of my biggest regrets. But at least I managed to put together a few simple sentences for this story.

_Bonjour_ – hello   
_Comment vas-tu?_ – how are you?  
_Je_ _gère_ – I manage  
_Et_ _tu?_ – and you  
_Pas trop mal_ – Not too bad  
_C'est_ _quoi?_ – What is it?  
_Je_ _suis désolé_ – I am sorry

I have to admit that I never expected _She Sang Beyond the Genius of the Sea_ to turn out like this. I am pleased—no, very pleased—with this entire story. I have to admit that I am quite proud actually. It is everything I wanted to someday contain in prose: poetry, imagery, philosophy, and my favorite beautifully tragic couple. I can only hope that you had enjoyed reading this as much as I had the pleasure of writing it.

This is my first completely finished multi-part story. This calls for a celebration full of graffiti and champagne. I think some thank-you's are due. First of all, I must thank my unfortunate computer that had to bear me through hours of typing, deleting, editing, and tantrum-ing when writer's block hit. Secondly, I want to thank whoever invented coffee and Starbucks: thank you, you are the only reason my writing exists. Thirdly and more seriously, I want to thank all my lovelies over on LiveJournal who read all the first drafts of this story. I want to lastly thank everyone who had left encouraging and flattering reviews for this story. Thank you for reminding me of why I enjoy writing.

Just as an aside, I actually wrote this author's note before I wrote this last chapter. I also wrote the last three paragraphs when I finished the first chapter. I find this helpful in reminding me that there is an end in sight and kept me from abandoning it altogether when my muse has gone away, and more importantly, to keep this story on track plot-wise. And it is done. DONE.

Now, I shall let out a long sigh of relief, kick back, read this story from top to bottom, and gloat in my own delight.

Please review before you leave.


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